May 28, 1999:

 

I refuse to die

even if

it kills me

 

.

 

even if

this Midwest lightning reminds

me of soft hands

and foreign lands I

can only understand

when my eyes

are burning

 

.

 

even if

this little ant clinging

to my wrist like my fists

to a frayed bib at 8:36

suddenly

stops

squirming

 

.

 

because today

the sirens cried

and it was almost like

God had arrived

to hold me one last time

and pull His final goodbye

 

,

 

pointing

to the point

of my knife

 

.

 

and on this day

the sirens cried

but my clingy little ant

didn't seem much

to mind

 

,

 

didn't flinch as I

held her one last time

and said goodbye

 

,

 

setting the knife

down

 

and leaving it there

 

"Seral?"

"It never stops raining here."

Corone sits next to her, muddying the ends of his coat. He looks up. He can only see a blur of colors running down his glasses.

He wonders if kites see the world this way, their memories muddled together until none of them are clear anymore.

"It does. It just rains most of the time."

"But I like it."

No, she doesn't, Corone thinks. How could anyone like being unable to see?

"I have so many memories now that I don't want new ones, Cor. And how do I do that without quitting being a kite? Closing my eyes, or...or drowning in the rain."

Corone's head jerks and Seral's doesn't and he knows that she saw it.

She's only fifty years old.

"Drowning in the sound of it, and the blindness of it. So that I can't sense anything that'll trigger my memories. So I can rest, until it stops again."

Her addendum doesn't comfort Corone. She can't die this young, in some decrepit fucking city whose only pros are mud and cheap doctors. Not after he -

He -

- he kind of wanted to die himself, fifty years ago.

"I don't want to watch it stop," Seral whispers, climbing up the stairs into the apartment.

 

For her sake, he doesn't want it to stop, either.